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Garner and Mass Get Ready to Dance

Dancing With the Cards is only a few weeks away and participants are trying their hardest to perfect their routines. With all the excitement in the air, I decided to sit down with a few competitors to see their thoughts on their progress.

Sophomore Sera Anello and Freshman Peter O’Gara are performing the Quickstep, a type of ballroom dancing with quick feet movements in time to fast-paced music. From what I’ve seen, the dance looks fantastic. Junior Hayley Fried, who dances recreationally, choreographed this couple’s dance. She said she felt “pretty good” about they were so far, as a duo. With rehearsals at least twice a week, at Hayley’s dance studio, Zero Gravity in Elkins Park, Sera and Peter have already been able to complete 1-1/2 of the 4 song-mix they will be dancing to! They’ve put in a great amount of effort into this competition, and they will certainly show it on the dance floor.

Mr. Garner and Ms. Mass are two of our many beloved teachers here at Upper Dublin. Mr. Garner, a History and Psychology teacher, is pairing up with Ms. Mass, who teaches Math, to dance, the Jitterbug. The Jitterbug is a type of swing dance that became popular in America in the beginning of the 1900s. For both Ms. Mass and Mr. Garner, this will be their first time competing in Dancing with the Cards. Mr. Garner is anxious, because he says he’s a terrible dancer, proclaiming he was “banned in 38 states, enough to get a constitutional amendment to stop dancing.” Although they haven’t had much practice in yet, Ms. Mass and Mr. Garner are still “both apt to learn” and excited to have fun. Their skilled choreographers are Sophomores Kinu Kaur and Eryn Cohen.

With determined teachers also competing, I had to ask if Sera and Peter thought they could beat these faculty participants. Peter O’Gara confidently said, “We will beat Ms. Mass because we are 20x better than her!” This was, obviously, said jokingly, but seeing as a teacher was being challenged, I wanted to hear how Ms. Mass and her partner, Mr. Garner, would respond.

Ms. Mass, who didn’t like to trash talk, after a moment of speechlessness replied, “I think he’ll just see what we’ve got when we get there, and he’ll go—‘Oh, yeah I was wrong’.”

I finally left them with my final question, wondering how they believed they would fare in the competition overall. Mr. Garner, who was a little lost for words, just laughed and said, “Just fine.” Ms. Mass jokingly answered, “I mean, I know we’ll be better than Peter O’Gara.”

*Good luck to all those competing, and special thanks to Sera Anello, Peter O’Gara, Hayley Fried, Mr. Garner, and Ms. Mass, for giving up your time. I am sure you will all do great, and we can’t wait to see you dance on March 20th at 7pm in the Performing Arts Center! Keep a lookout for ticket sales! It’s for a great cause and by the looks of what I’ve observed, you do not want to miss this event.